Category Archives: Talkin’ Transit

Foggy Bottom, Talkin' Transit, The Daily Feed, WMATA, WTF?!
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Foggy Bottom Metro Escalator Mess: AGAIN

Foggy Bottom Metro escalators have done it again, this time at the height of the Friday afternoon rush, and I have once again gotten video of the mess:

Last time this happened, only one escalator was barricaded, so desperate riders could at least scamper up the opposing escalator. Today, two were blocked, so only one shut-down escalator was available to serve as narrow stairs for both ascending and descending foot traffic. The result: crowds above and below. Epic fail once more.

Metro police and station personnel were on hand to do what little they could, but that didn’t seem to do much to thin the mass of people. And, as before — after taking this video, I didn’t bother waiting in line; it was faster to just walk the two blocks to Farragut West Station.

This is pretty bad, WMATA. Why have escalators at all if your contractors can’t even maintain them?

Talkin' Transit, The Daily Feed
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42 Jailed in Dulles Raid

As much as we’ve been talking about Dulles in our travel columns, it’s interesting to see things take a turn in the construction of the new subway and terminals. 42 illegal laborers were arrested yesterday at the Dulles Construction site. A full 20% of the workers checked by Immigration & Customs Enforcement were tagged as without having valid work documents and were detained pending hearings about their status.

Downtown, Talkin' Transit, The Daily Feed, WMATA
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Red Line Delays Due to Track Fire

A small track fire on the Red Line at Metro Center prompted single tracking between Dupont Circle and Judiciary Square earlier this morning (around 7:30 AM), causing a cascade of delays down the Red Line in both directions all through the morning rush. The fire has been put out and trains are moving, but between 8:30 and 9:00 AM things were still a fair mess, with crowds of people filling trains and platforms to capacity.

To WMATA’s credit, communication with passengers from train and station PA systems was clear and thorough, and the rush hour crowd, though thick, flowed with tolerable courtesy and smoothness. (As quickly and safely as possible, as they say.) At least, that was my experience getting to work this morning. Does anyone else caught in the crowd feel differently?

(NBC4 reports that the fire started in a “stud post.” What are those?)

Featured Photo, Talkin' Transit, Technology, The Daily Feed
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Plane Trails on DC Cam

I’m a big fan of the National Park Service’s webcams, especially the Washington DC cam viewing the Mall area from the Netherlands Carillon on the GW Parkway. Having a windowless inside office I like to keep this cam (among other outdoor DC cams) open in a separate browser window to provide an outside view through the course of the work day. I’ve also used it for at least one time lapse video.

Checking the cam tonight brought an especially cool treat: a long exposure shot catching a plane making the River Visual approach to landing at National:

Webcam captures plane

Webcam captures plane

(Here’s how that approach looks from a pilot’s perspective aboard a small plane in daylight. More here.)

Update: Oh nice, check out brianmka’s incidental capture of a landing plane at night from right near the same webcam.

Talkin' Transit, The Daily Feed, WMATA, WTF?!
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iMetro: The Three C’s

“Couth, courtesy, and common sense” — iMetro’s three personal values whose deficiency makes Metro that much more unpleasant to ride. (Strictly speaking, though, “couth” is more adjective than noun, generally used as ironic foil to “uncouth.”) He follows up with a few photos demonstrating said unpleasantness. I’m especially WTF-ing at the jacket on the other side of the tracks and the rocks on the glass canopy. And next time I see someone doing chin-ups on the overhead bars I might just pull down his pants. Or at least tut-tut sternly.

More fun Metro ranting at WTFMetro.

Talkin' Transit
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Talkin’ Transit: HOT! HOT! HOT!

Photo courtesy of magandafille

In Traffic, courtesy of magandafille

And so it begins.

The like-it-or-not High-Occupancy Toll lanes are now a step closer to reality – at least in Northern Virginia.

So what are these HOT lanes, exactly?

These are specialized lanes that will reside on the ‘inside’ of the Beltway (specifically, a stretch of I-495 in NoVA) where carpools can use them for free and individual drivers looking to ditch the rest of us pokies will have to cough up some money. But there’s no actual ‘tollbooth’ to deal with. Continue reading →

Talkin' Transit, The Daily Feed, Travel
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Reagan Runway on the Move

WTOP is reporting that the main runway at DCA will be moved 300 feet south and made longer in order to keep planes from ending up in the drink and to comply with current FAA rules. That sounds simple enough, especially since they have until 2015 to complete the job. Yep, 7 years to move a runway 300 feet south. Clark Construction could build two or three stadiums in that amount of time.

Continue reading →

Talkin' Transit, The Daily Feed, WMATA, WTF?!
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WMATA’s Having a Rough July

metrofail.png

The overturned vehicle we mentioned this afternoon on I-395 in DC? Yeah, it was a WMATA van, transporting disabled passengers. They’re having a bad month over there at Metro, what with the Escalator issues, a Multi-failure Day, a busted Yellow line, and many other issues we’ve all talked about here.

I wonder, is there any place we should send our condolences for their rough month? What exactly do you get that friend that somehow manages to screw up every part of their core competency in just a few weeks?

Life in the Capital, Talkin' Transit, The District
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Ah-ha! Scramble Intersections

I was buzzing around the Internets today (as I do), looking for interesting photos, reading up on celebrity gossip, browsing through drink recipes, Googling people’s names – you know how it goes. Little did I know that when I clicked on one of my RSS feeds I would be slapped in the face by what seems like a brilliant idea: Scramble Intersections!

Continue reading →

Talkin' Transit, The Daily Feed, The District
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395’s a Mess

Due to an overturned vehicle on 395 through the District, with two lanes o westbound 395 and one lane of eastbound 395 closed. Paramedics are on the scene, but if you need to come through the District today, use surface streets, not 395. I would bet that they’ll still be cleaning this one up going into evening rush tonight, so start looking at alternate routes.

Talkin' Transit, The Daily Feed, The Great Outdoors, WMATA
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Metro Birding

IMG_6170.JPG

If you’re like me, you probably wake up every weekend morning thinking, “I’m tired of seeing only pigeons, sparrows, seagulls, starlings, and other parasitic and invasive avian species in this urban environment! But I don’t have a car! If only there were Metro-accessible places to see more diverse species of indigenous birds in the DC area!” Well, despair no more! John Beetham of the DC Audubon Society has posted Birding By Metro, your guide to bird-spotting locations easily accessible by DC public transportation.

Birding By Metro. Go do it. Seriously. Bring back pictures.

Talkin' Transit, The District, Travel
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Going “Clear” at Dulles

Security lines suck. There is just no other way to describe it. Imagine any other location where you are dragging luggage behind you, trying to juggle papers, and then have to take your shoes off to get somewhere. If Metro started enforcing rules like that, there would be a riot in most of DC.

The biggest problem with TSA security is how long it takes. (I’m going to ignore the “gigantic” problems for now – I’ll hold my TSA ranting for later.) Arriving at an airport is a crap shoot – you could fly through security, or you could wait an hour for a single lane. And, as a frequent traveler, that drives me crazy. It’s a lot of time I could be using doing something useful – like blogging.

So, after seeing the Clear Lanes expand in to Dulles, and then working my way towards the $128.00 fee (most of which is paid by my company), I decided to take the plunge and find out how much faster this new system is.   Continue reading →

Talkin' Transit, The Daily Feed
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What Car Talk knows that WMATA doesn’t

Paulo’s video of the elevator debacle yesterday reminded me of a Car Talk puzzler from a few years ago that made me think about WMATA and their seemingly endless escalator problems. Sadly my thoughts haven’t changed much since I heard this in 2004…

The puzzler, which Tom and Ray credit to Irving Biggio, goes like this: “In our fair city of London, England– not far from the real Cambridge—many of the Underground, or subway, stations have three escalators.

It’s always the case that two of them are up escalators, and one is a down escalator. It doesn’t matter which way the rush hour crowds are moving, or if more people are arriving or leaving, or the time of day: There are always two that go up, and one that goes down. The same is true for underground stations out in the suburbs.

Why?”

some tips and a link to the answer after the jump. Continue reading →

Foggy Bottom, Talkin' Transit, WMATA, WTF?!
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Foggy Bottom Metro Escalator Mess

Big mess at Foggy Bottom this morning. Watch this video:

Foggy Bottom is the singularly worst-designed Metro station I’ve used in the system: only one exit, twin escalators going up together from platform to mezzanine, and just a single escalator going down to the platform, no stairs, traffic bottlenecks all over the place. The situation was made worse this morning when only one of three mezzanine-to-street-level escalators was working — going down. The middle escalator was closed for repairs, and the escalator going up was open but off, serving as stairs. I’ve seen it like that before, but throw in a rush hour crowd in a time of “high” fuel crisis ridership, and you get a foot traffic disaster.

I didn’t even bother joining the line; it was faster to go back in, double back to Farragut West, and walk from there. When I got back to Foggy Bottom to get some video of people emerging from the system, a few daring riders had resorted to running up against the down escalator — to cheers from the crowd, surprisingly.

WMATA, This is intolerable. You have reached a new level of EPIC ESCALATOR FAIL this morning — even worse than on epic multifail day.

Update: I was on TV today for this video: Fox 5 News Edge story, featuring a quick interview with me outside Foggy Bottom station this afternoon. Washington Post’s “Get There” blog also covers the story: No Way Up at Foggy Bottom, and Clearing Out Foggy Bottom.

Talkin' Transit, The District, Travel
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Diamond Lanes at Dulles

My job puts me on the road.  A lot.  And, because I fly from DC, I’m a United Airlines Frequent Flyer.  For those of you in the know I’ve been a 1K for five years now. For those of you that don’t know what that is – let’s just say I get in a lot of airplanes. So one day Tom asked me “what is it like to travel out of DC?” and after a lengthy explanation he asked me if I would blog about it. So here goes…

Dulles is always under construction. Let’s just assume that is a constant. The benefit is that construction means that there are always new things happening and changing at the airport. Normally they fall in to the category of “oh no” or “not again”. I’m sure I will write about a few of those later.

Imagine my surprise to find a good change! Dulles has something new called the “Diamond Lanes”. These lanes are supposed to be for “frequent travelers (2 or more times a month)”. And – put down your coffee before continuing – the lines are really short! That’s because they are difficult to find. The Diamond Lanes are downstairs in arrivals (baggage claim). To find them, head over to Door 4. There, about 50 feet from the Clear lanes and the Employee lanes, is a new security section. Voila, you just found the back door. Continue reading →

News, Talkin' Transit, The District, WMATA
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Talkin’ Transit: Four More Years!

Photo courtesy of brianmka

Metro Center, courtesy of brianmka

No, no, this isn’t about the current administration.

We’re talking WMATA and their plan to rehabilitate the Red Line during a four-year stretch. Meaning that aside from rush hour, the most-used line in the system will see off-peak and weekend delays for an entire presidential term.

And if approved, it’ll come right at the time when daily ridership records are falling left and right like so many dominoes. Continue reading →

Talkin' Transit, The Daily Feed, WTF?!
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Metro Computer Dies

metrofail.png

Somewhere, deep within the bowels of the Metro tunnels lives the supercomputer that runs the trains. It keeps them running without (often) hitting other trains, it keeps the schedule on pace, and it powers those fancy clocks on each platform.

Unfortunately, it took a shit in the middle of Rush Hour.

Meaning that all the signals for the entirety of the Metro system are currently offline. Meaning it’s tough to move trains.

Did I mention that it gets kinda hot down in those stations? And the platforms get kinda full? Take a cab, if you haven’t left work yet.

Sports Fix, Talkin' Transit, The Daily Feed
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Open Top: Closed Shuttle

From WaPo: Open Top Sightseeing, purveyors of double-decker bus tours, has suspended its Nationals shuttle service after two people were killed standing on the upper deck as the bus went through an underpass.

Condolences go out to the families of those killed.

It’s unclear if there was sufficient clearance for the bus, or if the two guys who died were standing on the floor or on their seats, and the whole thing is being investigated; but I think we can all agree: don’t stand while riding the upper deck, and if you are standing, for heaven’s sake please sit down if you see a tunnel or bridge approaching.

Washing

Downtown, Talkin' Transit, The Daily Feed
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Weinermobile on K Street

Random Washington DC

Since its invention in 1936 by Oscar’s nephew, Carl G. Mayer, the Weinermobile has been a marketing icon. And not for the first time, was it recently seen on Washington DC streets.

Here it is touring K Street, probably giving a Congressman a lift to a mid-day power lunch.

The question must be asked then: If you were in a position of power, and had the opportunity to take the Winermobile for a spin, would you? And where in DC would you go?

Talkin' Transit
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Questioning Ghost Bike Barricades


Photo by maxedexposure

As a cyclist, I have two minds about the Alice Swanson Memorial that WABA organized.

On one hand, I do see it as a way to remind drivers and cyclists that we all need to share the road and respect each other a bit more, no matter our presumed importance or right of way.

On the other, doesn’t this memorial itself present a danger to cyclist and motorist alike? Pretty soon, this will become yet another obstruction on the sidewalk, no matter its good intentions, and by diverting pedestrians into the street, it will cause cyclist and driver alike to quickly swerve into each others’ path.

Might there be a better way to remind us of the dangers of metal vs. human? Maybe a painted chalk outline of a cyclist on pavement or a rumble strip shaped like a bike?

I for one, would rather have dedicated bike lanes instead of a dedicated ghost bikes.